Facebook zooms in on visual content to help celebrate World Photo Day

citalliance / 123RFToday, August 19, marks World Photo Day, an event designed to help encourage photographs that inspire positive changes. To celebrate, Facebook is sharing data on all the ways photos have impacted the social media platform.

During the past year, New Year’s Eve was the date that brought the most photos to both Facebook and Messenger. So who’s sharing all those photos? According to Facebook, users from the U.S. are the most photo-happy, followed by Thailand, Egypt, India, Philippines, Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, and Indonesia. Looking at only photos shared on Messenger, Brazil shares the most, followed by Algeria, Egypt, Vietnam, India, Mexico, the U.S., Thailand, Philippines, and Poland.

Now that Facebook’s mobile app has a built-in camera, the platform also collects data on what effects are used the most. The top augmented reality mask is the black fedora with sunglasses, while the tunnel zoom was the most-used style effect. For frames? Tulip took the title as the most-used option.

Inside Messenger, the most popular AR mask was the ever-stylish cat-on-top-of-head. Daisies took top effect, while the hearts have it for photo frames.

Facebook has recently started focusing on visual content, including both photo and video, through several updates to the app over the past year. In April, the social media platform added augmented reality camera capabilities in-app with just a quick swipe. The feature began as a tool for users to share photos featuring filters and effects, and recently expanded to include GIFs, Live, and direct sharing to Stories, another visual content option that launched earlier this year.

The traditional Facebook photo album also got a refresh this summer, gaining the ability to add text, locations and videos into the album along with the usual photos. Users can also choose which albums to feature on their profile.

As part of World Photo Day, Facebook is encouraging users to make the most of those shareable shots. The platform suggests exploring the latest new features, including Stories, Facebook Camera and the updated albums. Facebook is also encouraging World Photo Day fans to choose images to feature on their Facebook profile, as well as explore 360 photography.

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An API bug recently left an impact on Facebook users. Though the issue has since been fixed, some of the apps on the platform had a wrongful access to consumers photos for 12 days between September 13 and September 25.

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Digging into Snapchat's code suggests a handful of upcoming camera features, including a portrait mode. The feature appears to use facial recognition A.I. to blur the background. The code also suggests an updated camera interface.

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Not getting your hashtag fill with #ThrowbackThursday or #ManCrushMonday? Here's a list of some of the more popular Instagram hashtags, so you can outfit your next post with the proper tag, regardless of what day it is.